Kiss of the King Brown

Kiss of the King Brown
(Click the King Brown)

Thursday, September 19

“Let me give you some counsel – bastard.”


“Let me give you some counsel – bastard.”

From a Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. First Book.

Tyrion Lannister (Dwarf) speaking to Jon Snow. (Bastard of Ed Stark)

 

“Let me give you some counsel bastard.” Lannister said. “Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”

Jon was in no mood for anyone’s counsel. “What do you know about being a bastard?”

“All dwarfs are bastards in their father’s eyes.”

……..

Remember this, boy. All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be dwarfs.”

 

 

From Walter Anderson:

Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.”


 

Bad things happen, we often feel defeated or trapped. Life is like that it gives than it takes away.  We have a number of choices from hiding away or pretending the adversity does not exist, to going forth and meeting it head on.  Or a combination of the two.

But the real truth is that in every negative situation there are positives and we must have the courage to find them.

If we understand this dramatic truth, then when you face life’s difficulties, ask yourself some simple questions:

ü What can I learn from this event?

ü What power do I have over this event?

ü When looking at this event in perspective what can I learn from it?

ü Would or could I do things differently next time?

ü What possibilities has this event opened up for me?

ü Will my experience of this event enable me to help others in similar situations?

ü Has this event made me stronger?

 

 

Here is an episode out of Martins’ own life:

The unexpected commercial failure of Martin's fourth book, The Armageddon Rag (1983), "essentially destroyed my career as a novelist at the time", he recalled. It began his career in television, however,[9] as a result of a Hollywood option on that novel that then led to him being hired, first as a staff writer and then as an Executive Story Consultant, for the revival of the Twilight Zone. ……And so on eventually beginning Writing Fire and Ice (Thrones) in 1991.

 

Life is a journey ups and downs and whether we are made stronger by its downs is dependent on one thing; captured by Martin in “Thrones.” It is our attitude, it is what we bring within ourselves and personally to every situation every gift.

 It is the startling fact that we are the arbitrators of our own destiny. We and only we determine our internal strength or weakness in face of life’s’ perils.

To do this we must use our minds and do some thinking but not any sort of thinking:

 

Thinking: Not any sort of thinking will do, you have to be able to do some deep thinking about how you are going to improve a situation.  You have to be able to analyse and go through the problem or opportunity. Sift through the details and asses the outcomes and possibilities. This does not happen in the middle of a busy day or frenetic activity. You have to stop yes that’s right stop. You have to make the conscious effort to stop all your activity and go somewhere and think about what is happening. For a lot of people this is not easy, they may even be frightened of confronting themselves. The other thing it is a habit, once you get into it, it’s not so bad. I have a thinking chair in my shed it is where I go, a quiet place away from everything.  The key is I am not running away from issues, problems or people.  I am actually facing them head on, meeting them, staring them down in the only place they really exist, my mind.

The secret is I have to be positive. It is so easy to slip into the old negative trip and blame game, be positive because that is the smart thing to do. It has been amazing to me over the years how thinking about things deeply makes the solution seem attainable, the project surmountable, and the relationship salvageable.

 

 

 

 
John Condliffe

19.9.13

 

 

 

 

 

 

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